


Worth Dying For

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Ghosts, Haunting, Hero/Villain, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: Alex runs his hand through his sleep-rumpled hair and grimaces. "I know reading social clues is not your kind of thing, Donoff, but in general when you kill someone, it means you want to see less of them, not more."





	Worth Dying For

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherryontop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryontop/gifts).



 

It's just another Tuesday night. Alex is bent over the bank's blueprints, going over entry points and the guards' schedules over and over again until his sight gets blurry and a headache starts to pound soft but insistent behind his forehead. He's too focused to pay attention to the faint prickle of discomfort that makes the hair at the back of his neck stand up, not until it's already too late.

"Staring at the schematics all night won't make this shitty plan of yours any less dangerous," someone says behind him, and Alex freezes.

He snaps around, reaching out with his telekinetic powers to pick up an assortment of sharp, pointy tools from the far wall and send them flying towards the intruder. 

Recognition stops him cold when his eyes fall on the figure leaning in the doorway. The projectiles stop in the air halfway between them, hovering uselessly for a long moment before clattering to the floor.

Connor Donoff, aka Apparate, raises an eyebrow. His stance remains relaxed, his arms crossed in front of him and his body curved in a lazy slouch, as if almost getting impaled by half a dozen pointy objects doesn't warrant concern, much less the use of his powers. He's out of costume, Alex vaguely registers, struck by the unfamiliar sight of Sky Ridge Bay's resident superhero in a pair of jeans and a worn-looking shirt, v-neck and short sleeves revealing slivers of ink usually covered by the suit-and-cape routine.

The _'What the hell are you doing here?'_ is already on the tip of Alex's tongue, along with _'How did you find me?'_. 

There's a more pressing issue, though.

"You're dead."

It was all over the papers these last couple of weeks, the city mourning its fallen hero. It doesn't mean shit – it would hardly be the first time they got it wrong. Superheroes fake-die all the time, only to return three days later when it turns out their injuries weren't that bad after all or they're actually immortal or they faked their own demise to have a quiet weekend out of town with their new girlfriend. No one bats an eye at that kind of stuff anymore, but Alex knows for a fact that Connor didn't do any of those things. It's not just that he's not the type for this sort of publicity stunt, no; Alex is pretty damn certain that Apparate died for real. 

The reason he knows that? Because Alex is the one who killed him.

He stood over the guy's broken body and reached down to search for a pulse, and he still remembers that strange, hollow feeling when he couldn't find one. How the sense of victory never quite set in; that weird, unexpected twinge of regret.

That doesn't explain how Connor's at Alex's safe house sixteen days later. He shrugs like Alex's words don't faze him at all. "Yeah, so what?"

He uncrosses his arms and pointedly holds Alex's gaze as he reaches out towards the wall and — puts his arm _through_ the wall.

Well. Fuck.

Just another Tuesday night, right? Yeah, maybe not.

#

"Look, Donoff, I don't understand what you want from me." The pounding in his skull is stronger now, making Alex rub his forehead in an attempt to soothe away the pain. "Do you need some kind of closure before you can... I dunno, move on to the great beyond? Are you looking for some sort of apology? Sorry I dropped a crate on you and broke your neck, but that's how it goes, alright? You try to stop me, we fight, one of us wins. You signed up for that kind of risk when you put on that ridiculous cape of yours and started playing hero."

The lofty, dismissive tone is meant to rile Connor up, but he only rolls his eyes. "Oh, get over yourself, will you?"

He walks up to Alex and flops down in the chair across from him, putting his feet up on the table. The stack of blueprints gets hopelessly rumpled and dirty under his sneakers, but when Alex tries to shove Connor's legs off, his hand passes through like he's just a mirage. 

"I don't give a shit about your apology," Connor continues. "I'm not here for some grand purpose, or whatever you think this is. I'm bored. Being a ghost isn't as exciting as the movies make it out to be."

"Go haunt someone else, then."

"Don't wanna," Connor says with a grin that tells Alex that he's perfectly aware that he sounds like a petulant six-year-old. 

Instead of annoying him, it vaguely makes Alex remember how Connor used to be back when he started out on that hero gig, a snarky little shit who seemed to take great joy in crossing the plans of every criminal and villain in Sky Ridge Bay. Back before the job got him all jaded and he began looking like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Before he got publicly unmasked by Floodgate, before Lady Savage killed his best friend on live TV broadcast. 

Alex frowns and shoves the odd rush of sentimentality down, focusing on the problem at hand. The idea of a dead do-gooder following his every step is making his already foul mood sour even more. 

"Suit yourself," he grates out between clenched teeth. "But if you mess up my plans, I promise you I'll find a way to make your ghostly existence a hell of a lot more unpleasant." 

"I'm shaking with fear," Connor quips in a deadpan voice, but he lets Alex pull the blueprints out from under his feet without a struggle, so maybe the threat did have some kind of effect.

Alex gets so immersed in his planning that it's easy enough to tune out Connor's running commentary. When he finishes for the night, looking up for the first time in an hour, the seat opposite him is empty. 

His eyes search the room, but there's no trace of his dead adversary anywhere. The urge to call out Connor's name is sudden and unexpected, and Alex bites his tongue and waits for it to pass, telling himself that he should be relieved that Connor's gone, that he should be hoping that this time, it'll be for good.

#

In the morning, the smell of coffee wakes him. Or maybe it's the clattering of dishes in the kitchen. Ordinarily, the noise would instantly make adrenaline pump through his veins and he'd barge in poised to fight whoever had the nerve to break into a supervillain's safe house. But after last night, he has a pretty good idea of who he's going to find when he steps out of the bedroom.

And sure enough, there's Connor, wearing the same clothes as yesterday and rummaging around Alex's kitchen like he owns the place. 

Alex runs his hand through his sleep-rumpled hair and grimaces. "I know reading social clues is not your kind of thing, Donoff, but in general when you kill someone, it means you want to see less of them, not more."

Connor snorts. "It's cute how you think that _when you kill someone_ they'll give a shit about what you want or don't want." There's bite in his tone, but he's smiling, and the cup he holds out for Alex belies the harsh words. 

Alex's hesitation when he takes the offered coffee makes Connor scoff. "I didn't poison it. Not my style. I'm the good guy, remember?"

It's a fair point. 

Alex takes a cautious sip, the rich flavor tinged with bitterness hitting him right between the eyes, just the way he likes it first thing in the morning. A satisfied sound escapes his throat that he doesn't bother reining in.

The cup is almost empty when he notices Connor staring at him with an unreadable expression, somewhere between intrigued and weirded out, his own steaming cup still untouched.

"What?"

"Jesus, the noises you make. Makes me wonder if instead of throwing you in jail, threatening to take your coffee away from you wouldn't have been a better incentive for keeping you on the straight and narrow."

Alex narrows his eyes. _'You get between me and my coffee, I put you down,'_ he almost says before he remembers just in time that he already did just that. "Oh, fuck off," he mutters uncreatively, filling up his cup again and forcing himself to ignore it when Connor laughs.

It doesn't take long before the laughter dies down, lost in a string of curses. When Alex faces Connor again, he finds him glaring at the cup of coffee like it personally offended him.

He's not going to take the bait. He isn't.

Connor turns and pours his coffee into the sink with a sour face, and Alex twitches. That was some perfectly good coffee there. 

"What's it now? Too bitter for you? You like the watered-down shit they serve at Starbucks, don't you?"

Keeping his back to Alex, Connor leans against the sink, staring down at the drain like it holds all the answers to life, the universe and everything, and there's a new tension in the lines of his shoulders that wasn't there a moment ago. It intrigues Alex, makes him want to poke at Connor until he snaps, makes him want to figure out what brought on the change of mood and use it to keep getting under his skin.

It's almost disappointing that he doesn't have to, that Connor can't endure a tense silence for more than sixty seconds without folding. 

"I can't taste anything," he tells the tiled wall, his voice as tight as the fingers he clenches around the edge of the counter top.

It takes too long until the meaning of the words catches up with Alex, because with the familiar banter flowing back and forth between them he somehow managed to forget that Connor's not exactly corporeal anymore. 

"Huh. Makes sense, I guess." For the first time since Connor showed up last night, Alex bothers to really think about what this means. "How did you manage to make coffee anyway? I mean, you had to be able to actually touch things, not just reach through them like you did with the wall."

Connor shrugs. "It's about intent, I guess. I can touch things if I put my mind to it. Or maybe I gotta put my mind to it to be able to pass through things. I haven't really figured it out. It's not like anyone gave me a 101 on 'what happens when you're killed and turn into a ghost'." 

Frustration swings in his voice. The urge to reach out and put a hand on Connor's back is too strong to be denied, and Alex's impulse control has always been shit, which is the whole reason why he became a supervillain in the first place. 

He almost expects his hand to pass through, but it doesn't. It's the strangest feeling, though. His hand rests on the middle of Connor's back, and there's something solid that stops it from going further, but he doesn't _feel_ it. The softness of the cotton shirt, the warmth of the skin underneath, the solidity of the muscles moving – Alex's brain supplies all of that because it should be there, right under his fingertips, but the sensations just won't come. "You feel that?"

Connor turns, dislodging Alex's hand. "Feel what?"

Alex looks at him until the frown lines on Connor's face convince him that he's not messing with him. He shakes his head and reaches past Connor to put his cup in the sink too, his insides churning from what he tells himself is too strong coffee on an empty stomach.

#

He leaves Connor at the house when he goes out for his meeting with Tatiana. He doesn't like to have anyone snooping around his stuff when he's not there, but until he figures out how to make his place ghost-proof, there's not much he can do about it.

Alex prefers to work on his own, but there are jobs when it's better to have back-up. 

When she's out of costume, Tatiana is a surgeon at Sky Ridge Memorial. He imagines it must pay well enough, which sometimes makes him wonder why Tatiana bothers with high-class heists and street-fights with superheroes, but she's not exactly the chatty kind who offers up information about herself. Which is probably why her secret identity is actually a secret, unlike his or most other villains'. 

To be fair, Tatiana scares him a little. Some journalist once called her alter ego, Black Current, Alex's sidekick in the caption of a blurry smartphone shot on the front page. The poor guy was never seen or heard from again. 

Working with her always makes Alex's skin prickle uncomfortably. But no one's able to manipulate electronics like she does, taking out surveillance cams with a flick of a hand, steering cars that are half a block away and opening the doors of vaults with a mere thought. As much as he loathes to admit it, he needs her for this job.

Which makes it particularly annoying when, in the middle of explaining the plan to her, Connor's suddenly perched on the edge of the desk, looking from Alex to Tatiana and back.

"Since when are you the sharing kind? Oh, wait, is this— _Black Current_? Wow, I thought he was a guy. She, I mean. Huh. She doesn't look that scary without the mask and all." 

Alex jumps. "What the hell is wrong with you? You can't be here." 

Tatiana is going to kill Connor, and since she can't because _he's dead already_ , she's going to kill Alex instead. He fully expects her to attack Connor, but she doesn't seem at all bothered that there's a dead hero at her table. All she does is turns to Alex with a frown. 

"What's gotten into you? You came to me, remember. I'm here because you fucking asked me to."

"What? No, not you. I mean him." He looks at Connor, who hasn't moved and is now wearing an awkward, guilty look, and Alex's voice trails off because he suddenly realizes that Tatiana can't see him. Sending a glare Connor's way, he fumbles with words, trying to make things right. "Sorry, I just thought we weren't — There was —"

The way Tatiana looks at him makes him wonder if he's going to get out of this alive, but apparently the trust they built up over the years is worth something.

She shakes her head. "Look, Alex, I don't know what you're on, or if some cape you tangled with scrambled your brains, but I don't think this is gonna happen." She points to the blueprints. "I don't work with people who don't have it all together upstairs."

When she gets up to leave, Alex tries to argue. "I can — "

She holds up a hand. Somewhere in the building, electricity sizzles. "Don't follow me."

Alex waits until she's gone before he turns to Connor, and the anger rising up in him makes him want to lash out. He flicks over the desk with a swirl of his wrist, letting it crash down on the floor with enough force that the wood splinters into pieces. Connor jumps up before he's thrown off.

"Was that fun for you?" Alex grates out between clenched teeth. "Making it look like I'm not quite right in the head? I mean, it figures that you can't let the heroic shit go even after you're dead, but ruining not just this job but years' worth of trust built between me and Tatya? That's something else. That's how it is, then? You gonna use those new ghost powers of yours to take your revenge? Ruin my life?"

Even though he stands close enough to touch, he uses the telekinesis to give Connor a shove, satisfied when he stumbles backwards. 

Connor holds up his hands. "No, that's not what this is about, I didn't —"

Alex laughs, because Connor's wide-eyed innocent 'who me' act didn't fly when he was alive, and death hasn't changed it. "You didn't what? Make yourself invisible to play me for a fool?"

Something on Connor's face closes down, and he pushes Alex back. His voice is unsteady with barely controlled emotion. Anger, mostly, but there's a desperation mixed in there that feels like a punch to the gut. "Fuck you, Rossi. I didn't _make myself_ anything. Your friend can't see me because no one else can see me, and there's not a fucking thing I can do about it, okay?"

He doesn't give Alex enough time to process the words before he pushes on. "Why do you think I'm sticking around, hanging out with the guy who broke my neck and made it pretty obvious that he'd do it again if he could, if I could just be with my sister or my friends instead? You really think I'd willingly spend time with you if I didn't have to? But after a few days of hanging around the people I love while they never even see me or hear me when I talk to them, I got so fucking lonely that I thought even some homicidal supervillain jerk was better than no one." Connor runs his hands over his face and up, ruffling the blond curls. He shakes his head, a smile on his face that holds no humor and too much bitterness. "But clearly, that was a mistake."

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he's gone.

#

Connor doesn't show up again that day, nor the next.

It's for the best, Alex thinks, and _good riddance_ , but he can't stop thinking about Connor sitting at the breakfast table with his family while they talk through him and around him, never knowing he's there. He imagines being dead and yelling at his grieving mother hoping that she'll hear him, his hand passing through her when he reaches for her, imagines that he couldn't interact with anyone but some cape he doesn't even like, and it sounds like the most miserable thing in the world.

"Hey, Donnof," he calls into the empty house, feeling a bit silly when there's no response. 

He tries again, though. "Connor."

Nothing.

"Stubborn asshole cape," he mutters under his breath, anger and disappointment mingling with embarrassment. His mind reaches for the bottle of expensive whiskey on the counter by the wall, floating it over to where he's sitting on the couch, when it's snatched out of the air by quick hands.

Connor unscrews the bottle and takes a swig from it, and Alex doesn't bother telling him to stop wasting his drinks when he can't taste shit, mollified when Connor walks over and holds the bottle out to him. Alex takes it, the weird non-feeling when their fingers touch sending a shiver down his neck that makes him abandon his plan to get them glasses and take a hit straight from the bottle instead.

They pass it back and forth in silence between them for a little while that almost feels comfortable. 

"Where've you been?" Alex asks eventually.

Connor shrugs. "Here and there." Alex assumes that's all the answer he's gonna get. Fair enough, after everything, he supposes. But Connor takes another drink and continues. "I stayed with my sister for a bit. It was good to see her, even if she can't — you know. Checked out your friend Black Current, too. Tried to fix things, find some way to explain to her what was going on, but it's not like passing through walls. It doesn't matter how badly I think about wanting to be seen, it just doesn't work."

"It's okay," Alex says, because Connor sounds so frustrated, and even if Alex doesn't know a fix, the least he can do is not make Connor feel guilty on top of it. "She'll come around." 

He's not convinced she will, but even though it'll make his jobs harder, it's not like he's losing a friend. It's the one advantage of not having any actual friends in the first place.

"I'm not here for revenge." Connor's voice is quiet and sad, and Alex doesn't for a moment doubt his sincerity. 

The whole thing feels like karma kicking Alex's ass, but Connor is not the one deliberately making it happen – this is happening to him as much as it's happening to Alex, maybe more so. It makes him wonder who the hell Connor pissed off to be dealt such a shitty hand.

"Yeah, I got that," Alex says, taking the bottle back from Connor. 

There's something he should set right too, he knows, but he's not drunk enough for that.

#

It's a peace offer of sorts when he tells Connor he should tag along for dinner with his mother. Mostly, anyway. There's also the fact that if he's aware of Connor being right there with him from the start, Connor's not able to make a surprise appearance that'll startle Alex into another involuntary reaction like the one that spooked Tatiana.

And if he enjoys getting to watch Connor suffer from having no functioning tastebuds while he's watching Alex' mother shoving a giant plate of the best cannelloni in the world at him... Well, he's a supervillain, after all. 

What he hadn't counted on is his mother's insistence that somehow, being a supervillain should be _beneath_ Alex, and soon enough they're having the same argument they've been having for almost a decade now, except this time it's in the unfortunate presence of a superhero. 

"Why don't you get a proper job, Alessandro?" She sighs. "Aren't you a little old to be running about in a costume and causing havoc?" 

She's old-school like that, having grown up during a time when superpowers and costumed heroes and villains only existed in comic books, childish make-belief that you were supposed to grow out of unless you were the nerdy loser type. The world had changed since then, but his mother's generation hadn't changed along with it, tsking at news reports of superhero showdowns like they were silly movies made for teenagers.

Unsurprisingly, Connor is very much taken in by her complaints. 

"Yes, _Alessandro_ , how about you get a proper job?" he parrots, a shit-eating grin on his face that Alex would have loved to wipe off by sending the knife flying in his general direction. "Listen to your mother. Crime isn't good for you."

Before Alex can tell him to shut the hell up, his mother pushes on. "I'm sure Uncle Giovanni would find something for you in his restaurant. I know for a fact he's still looking to replace that manager who quit last month."

Alex blinks, because — what the hell?! 

"Mom, you and I and about everyone in town knows that Uncle Giovanni's restaurant is a front for the mob. And that manager didn't quit, he was found in a dumpster with a hole in his forehead. You want me to give up being a supervillain to become _a mobster_? How's that any better?"

His mother sniffs, like his objection is entirely ridiculous. "It's respectable, that's how. You'd be wearing tailored suits, not some silly spandex costume. And the papers wouldn't dare to write those horrible things about you."

On the other side of the table, Connor looks both horrified and amused at once. "Okay, I take it back. Don't listen to your mother."

Just to annoy him, Alex puts on an indulgent smile. 

"Okay, sure, I'll think about it," he tells his mother. He'll do no such thing, but it's worth it for the expression on Connor's face alone.

#

He's made a number of cutting remarks, both to Connor as well as to third parties, that it was Connor's own stubbornness that got him killed. But here's the thing: when it comes to being stubborn, Connor has nothing on Alex.

The bank job would have been a sure thing with Black Current at his back, making sure he got in and out fast enough, crippling the alarm system, making police cars crash into each other. Child's play, especially with the city one superhero short. And yeah, maybe he should have benched it, waited until Tatiana came around or just scrapped the whole thing altogether. But once he set his sights on something, he's bad at letting it go, and doing it as a solo op just meant that the reward was so much higher. 

So he suited up and let Connor's annoying, frustrated appeals of "It's such a waste, using those powers to be a criminal. You could do so much _better_!" egg him on rather than stop him as maybe, perhaps, he should have.

Hindsight... always so cheap afterwards, when you're barely able to hold yourself on your feet in an alleyway with your blood spilling out onto rain-wet asphalt and a bullet in your gut because some stupid, reckless security guard stormed in and decided to play hero instead of leaving that to the actual pros.

Alex steadies himself with a hand against the brick wall, trying to remember how to breathe around the pain, when Connor suddenly materializes in front of him. He takes one look at Alex before his eyes go wide in horror. "Shit, what the hell happened?"

"I guess you were right about the plan being shitty." Alex aims for witty and knows he misses by miles, judging from the expression on Connor's face. Though maybe that's mostly because Alex's legs give out beneath him right then and he collapses in a heap. 

Connor kneels beside him, ripping Alex's torn suit further apart while he searches for the source of the bleeding. An unhappy, broken little sound escapes his throat. "None of this would have happened if I'd been there to stop you," he mutters, like this is on _him_ , somehow, which is so ridiculously self-involved that it would make Alex roll his eyes if he had the strength.

"Yeah, and remember whose fault it is you weren't there." 

A heavy burst of coughing racks his body, making the pain in his gut multiply with the force of an explosion. When he wipes his hand across his mouth, it comes away bloody. 

"You need to get yourself to a doctor," Connor tells him, like Alex is sitting out here in a back alley because he's too lazy to walk into Sky Ridge Memorial and get help. 

He shakes his head. "Yeah, sorry, Donoff, I don't think that's gonna happen." 

This is as far as he's gonna make it, both literally and figuratively.

For a moment, Connor looks like he's gonna argue and tell him to stop messing around, but his gaze travels from the bloody pool around them over the hole in Alex's stomach to his face, and Alex doesn't even want to know how awful he must look because Connor's expression turns wretched and desperate. 

"You fucking asshole," he chokes out. His eyes are wet, and Alex doesn't understand why, doesn't think it's right, because someone like him doesn't deserve someone like Connor Donoff spilling a single fucking tear over him.

He reaches out with an unsteady arm and lets his hand rest against Connor's cheek. It's warm and wet under his palm. 

"I'm sorry, you know." Breathing becomes an effort, and it gets harder and harder to form words. But he's got to say this, before— He has to tell Connor. "About what happened... at the warehouse. I was.... just gonna knock you out. That crate... It wasn't... supposed to kill you."

He's not a saint. He’s killed before, and not always because it was him or them. But he liked going up against Apparate, used to enjoy the cat-and-mouse game they'd been playing for years. Even after Apparate lost some of his sunny disposition and became more dogged in his pursuit, Alex never wanted Connor dead.

"Yeah, I know," Connor says quietly. His hands press down against the wound in Alex's stomach, warm and steady, despite the blood gushing through his fingers like a red river running over. 

Alex puts his hand on top of Connor's, and he wonders if the reason he can feel him now is that he's already half-dead. "It's alright."

The world fades away into black.

#

When he blinks awake, Tatiana is standing above him, poking painfully at his stomach.

Alex cranes his neck to take a peek, but there's nothing to see. His mid-section is covered in thick white bandages.

"If you tear your stitches, I'm gonna dump you at the E.R. and you'll find your ass thrown into prison before the day is over," Tatania warns.

"Charming as ever." His voice sounds hoarse and vaguely slurry, the snark in his tone buried under too much strain. 

She gives him the 'do as your doctor ordered' glare, which he realizes is different from the 'I'm going to make your microwave murder you in your sleep' glare, but no less scary. He lies back and lets her do her work, trying to keep still even when her fingers hit a bad spot and the pain makes him wince. 

"How did you find me? I thought you wanted nothing to do with that job."

Tatiana doesn't look up as she shrugs. "I didn't. Your friend brought you to my doorstep. If you hadn't been half dead I'd have killed you for spilling my identity to your buddy."

"What? I didn't —" Alex frowns. "What friend?"

"Tall, blond. Looks a bit like that cape who bit the dust a few months ago, only prettier." 

This time, he can't stop his body from jerking up, despite the way the torn flesh in his gut protests. "You _saw_ him?"

Tatiana pushes him back down and gives him an odd look. "Sure did. Wasn't I supposed to? He some sort of secret agent or something?"

"Or something," Alex mutters under his breath. 

He stares at the ceiling, his thoughts swirling around Connor. Connor's hand under his own, the anguish on his face. How he somehow found a way to make Tatiana see him, just in time to save Alex's life.

Alex doesn't like owing people, not the kind of debts that can't be paid back by a stealthy transfer to an overseas account, but for some reason, owing Connor isn't so bad. Perhaps because accidentally killing him already hopelessly tipped the balance in Connor's favor, and there's no way Alex can ever make them even again anyway – so what's one more life-debt to be owed?

#

The next time Alex wakes, Connor is sitting on an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair at his bedside, feet up on Alex's bed. He's still wearing the same heather-grey shirt and faded jeans, but they look pristine, like no one ever bled all over them. Alex wonders if he washed it or if that's one of the perks of being a ghost.

"I can't believe you almost died on me," Connor says when he realizes that Alex is awake, too much relief in his tone for his glare to be effective. "I know I called your plan shitty and dangerous, because all of your plans kind of are, but that's a whole new level of shitty and dangerous."

"You went and saved my life, so I don't know which of us made worse decisions that day," Alex quips weakly, and Connor's glare intensifies.

"Don't even joke about that."

Alex bites his tongue and doesn't tell him that he's not joking. He's just about to ask why Connor's wasting his time here with him instead of hanging out with his caped buddies or his sister now that he's figured out a way to be seen by people-who-are-not-Alex when Tatiana comes in. 

She frowns at Alex and checks his temperature, looking vaguely concerned. As much as Tatiana ever looks concerned, anyway. 

"What's wrong? Don't tell me I'm dying after all and all that trouble Connor went through was for nothing." He levels a smile at Connor, surprised to see him wince and avert his eyes, and something about his reaction is off. Maybe Alex _is_ dying, after all.

Tatiana frowns. "Thought I heard you talking to someone. But the painkillers don't cause hallucinations and you're not running a fever, so either you've taken to talking to yourself or you should get this pretty head of yours checked out."

Alex looks from the chair Connor is sprawled in to Tatiana, struck by the realization that he's once again the only person in the room aware of Connor's presence. When he sends a confused look in the other man's direction, Connor shrugs, resignation written all over his face. "Yeah, I thought it would stick, too. But apparently, we're back to square one. I guess you need to be dying for me to actually be visible." 

Almost immediately, a flash of horror twists his features, like he regrets voicing that idea. "Let's not actually test that theory, okay?"

It costs Alex some effort to turn back to Tatiana and pretend that the man sitting right next to him doesn't actually exist. "My head's fine, Tatya. Don't worry about it."

She raises an eyebrow and nods skeptically, following the line of his gaze to Connor. Her frown deepens and her look is too sharp, and Alex imagines that she's wondering why the chair is standing in the middle of the room, angled to the bed, and where the impressions of feet on the mattress come from, but she doesn't ask. 

She shakes her head. "Whatever you say, Rossi. It's your life."

#

"Seriously, a medium?" Connor looks from the doorplate to Alex and back again, exasperated enough that Alex would probably find himself at the receiving end of a few harsher choice words if he hadn't just got back on his feet and Connor hadn't started treating him annoyingly like he was breakable since the whole almost-dying-in-his-arms business. "You know most of them are frauds, right? And anyway, you can already see me and talk to me. What the hell do we need a medium for?"

The door opens before he can come up with a suitably cutting reply, and Alma appears in the doorway. Even though she's his mother's age, she looks at least a decade older with her white hair and her lined, sun-tanned face. But as long as Alex has known her, her dark eyes never lost that sparkle of youthful mischief.

"Alessandro! Hello, dear," she greets him, before her gaze shifts behind him to where Connor is standing. Something like recognition flashes in her eyes, and Alex knows at once that she can see Connor, a giddy wave a relief rushing over him. Alma narrows her eyes. "And... Mr. Donoff, is it?" 

Connor splutters in surprise, and Alex grins at him. "Oh, ye of little faith..." 

"I suppose that answers the question of what brings you to me." Alma turns to Alex again after she's ushered them inside.

"I need you to fix him."

"Hmm." She inclines her head. "Fix him... how exactly? Make him disappear properly, or bring him back to life?"

Alex thought about consulting Alma when Connor first showed up, and back then his answer would have been a different one, so he doesn't begrudge her the question. He doesn't have to think about the answer, though. "The latter."

There's something knowing in the piercing stare Alma fixes him with, and Alex wants to squirm under its weight. He wonders if she's maybe a mind-reader. It wouldn't quite surprise him. "Funny, the papers made it sound like you were the one who brought this on in the first place."

"I won him over with my charm and my wits," Connor chimes in, and it almost startles Alex to see him actually interacting with someone else. "I don't know about this, though." 

Huh. After everything, he'd have thought that Connor would be ecstatic by the prospect of coming back, actually being able to be seen again and spend time with people other than the homicidal supervillain jerk who killed him, enjoying food and coffee like a normal person and feeling it when people touch him. 

"What, you like being a ghost now?"

"Of course not, that's not—" 

Connor shakes his head and starts pacing, clearly frustrated by Alex's inability to understand why he isn't jumping at the chance to be brought back to life and yet struggling with how to explain it. Alma gives him an oddly sympathetic look, as if she gets it even when Alex doesn't. 

"Everyone knows I'm dead. I come back now, they all think I'm a fraud. And honestly, I don't know if I really want to... have it all start over again. The fighting and all. Protecting this city at the cost of placing everyone I love in danger. They're safe now. Well, as safe as anyone ever is around here, anyway."

He runs a shaky hand over his face, looking as if having to choose between being a ghost and being a superhero is harder on him than dealing with his own death ever was. Never even once considering that those aren't the only two choices he has. 

It seems pretty straightforward to Alex. "So you don't take up the cape again. Get out of town, start over anew. No one's forcing you to be a superhero. You gave your life to the city once. I'd say that's enough of a good deed for a lifetime or two."

Connor throws him a withering glare. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

The irony of it is – he's wrong. Out of all the options, it's the one Alex likes least. He'd prefer for them to return to the old game of Apparate vs. Mindstrike, almost as much as he'd like to keep Connor around as the helpful ghostly companion he never has to share with anyone else. He's a selfish man, and he enjoys the rush of adrenaline of measuring his powers against a superhero's whose strength is equal to his. 

He could tell Connor all of this, but he doesn't. He shrugs, like he doesn't care either way, and then promptly ruins the show of nonchalance by saying the one thing that's so damning that it'll shatter the status quo between them so thoroughly than it can never be regained. 

"I just want you to be happy, that's all."

#

"Well, it's been... something."

Connor's mouth twitches into a wry smile as he rubs his bruised fingers from where he tried to put his hand through another wall and discovered the downsides of being corporeal again. 

The warmth in his gaze makes Alex's skin prickle. It's like he's forgotten that Alex was the one who killed him or – worse, perhaps – that he doesn't care. 

Alex wants to lash out at him and tell him to stop acting like they're friends. Except, maybe, after everything, that's what they are. Not that it matters, because Connor is leaving, and even though his powers mean that he's never more than the blink of an eye away, the kind of life Alex leads hardly makes for stable friendships, and he's got no other life than this one.

It's that weird tug of melancholy that makes him say, "Yeah. Turns out you're not so bad when you put down the cape and the righteousness and stop messing up my plans."

"Careful, Rossi, it almost sounds like you're gonna miss me."

"I wouldn't go that far," Alex counters with a sour expression. Even though Connor's not wrong and despite having admitted to far more incriminating things, somehow this feels like a little too much truth.

He warily eyes the hand Connor holds out for him to shake, and it almost gives him a jolt when the fingers that grip his own are warm and callused, solid against his skin, _alive_. He lets his hand drop away quickly, afraid that he if he holds on for too long, he won't be able to let go at all.

"Try not to get yourself shot again, okay? And maybe don't drop crates on the other superheroes." Connor is still smiling, but there's a serious undertone in his voice, like he's actually concerned.

"No promises."

"Don't be surprised if you wind up with another ghostly companion pestering you, then."

For the first time since they left Alma's, Alex finds himself with a smile tugging at his cheeks. "I like to think you were a special case."

He can't quite keep the fondness out of his voice, and something in the way Connor looks at him makes his stomach lurch with a hollow, unpleasant feeling that lingers long after Connor has teleported away, off to check in with his sister and then to God knows where, leaving Sky Ridge Bay and its troubles and dangers far behind.

#

The house feels so empty that Alex barely lasts a day until he gives in and plans his next job.

The papers have been speculating about Mindstrike's demise after the botched heist at the bank, hailing the reckless security guard as the man who saved Sky Ridge Bay from the villain who killed Apparate, and Alex feels the need to prove them wrong, show everyone that it's not that easy to put Mindstrike down. 

The stitches in his gut prickle when he scouts the internet for places and events worth hitting for his next outing, but he ignores the uncomfortable reminder of how wrong things went the last time around. Crime is like riding a bike. You fall off, you need to get back on again as soon as you can, because otherwise you'll get too caught up in all the things that can go wrong and the fear stops you from hopping on ever again. 

He's wondering if he can convince Tatiana to join him this time, assure her that he's not actually crazy, when the familiar crack of apparition cuts through the silence of the room.

Alex looks up at Connor with a frown. His heart beats faster at once. Adrenaline, he tells himself, just leftover from the old days when that sound of Apparate materializing before him was the prelude to a fight. That's all there is to it. 

"Forgot something?"

For a moment Connor looks unsure, like he regrets coming back. It doesn't bode well. Maybe Connor has changed his mind about hanging up the cape. A new kind of wariness grips Alex as he wonders if he should get ready for a fight after all. 

Determination settles on Connor's face and the tension in Alex grows when Connor steps towards him. 

"Yeah, this," he says, and it's all the warning Alex gets before Connor takes his face in his hands and kisses him.

It almost takes Alex too long to catch up with what's happening and get with the program. Connor's hands are already dropping away and he's backing off, and yeah, no, that's not gonna happen. 

Alex lets his fingers tangle in Connor's curls and pulls him close enough to catch his lips in another kiss, all tongue and heat and desire bottled up for too long. He's wanted this since he woke up at Tatiana's with Connor at his bedside. (Except that's not quite true, is it? He's wanted this since Connor gave him a lengthy speech about why becoming a mobster was a horrible, bad, no good idea and that he changed his mind about Alex being a supervillain, after dinner with his mum.)

The kiss goes on until they're both out of breath, and Connor makes a tiny sound of protest when Alex breaks away, hands clenching around Alex's upper arms to stop him from going far. 

He rests his forehead against Alex's, and the gesture feels almost more intimate than the kiss.

"Come with me," Connor says. Before Alex can give him a long and detailed list of all the reasons why this is a terrible idea, he pushes on. "You said it yourself – there's no one forcing either of us to keep doing this. We can start over. Go somewhere no one has heard of Apparate or Mindstrike. Stop using those powers for villainy or heroics."

"We'd get bored within a month," Alex argues. "I don't know about you, Connor, but I do what I do because I enjoy it."

"Yeah? What exactly is it you enjoy? The planning, the money, hurting people, seeing your name in the papers?" Before Alex can say, _'All of it'_ , despite the fact that none of what Connor said sounds all that appealing, Connor adds, "You sure it's not just going against me that gave you that thrill you wanted?"

Alex snorts. "I'm glad to see that your ego got resurrected, too. I've been putting every damn cape who tried to stop me in their place long before you got that suit of yours fitted." 

But he still hasn't stepped away from Connor, his hand remaining buried in Connor's hair while he stands close enough to feel the other man's heartbeat against his chest. 

Connor gives him a withering look. "And yet you stopped pulling jobs for two months after I died."

He doesn't say _'after you killed me'_ , but Alex still winces. 

"I guess you could say I lost my taste for violence for a while," he admits quietly. 

Sometimes when he closes his eyes, he still sees Connor dead in front of him, lying on the ground in the warehouse with his stupid bright cape fanning out under him and his neck twisted at an ugly angle. Those memories should have become less terrifying now that Connor is alive again, but somehow, these past couple of weeks have only made them worse.

Connor's raised eyebrow seems to say _'my point exactly'_ , as if Alex's admission proves him right. And who knows... maybe it does. Maybe Alex should really take what happened during his last two outings as Mindstrike, those close calls that were a little too close and almost cost both of them their lives, as a sign to put away the mask and the costume for good. The prospect doesn't sound entirely terrible, when he thinks about it.

"Fine, let's give it a try."

Connor's smile is as bright as sunshine, so hopeful that it almost hurts, and Alex needs to warn him not to expect too much. "But if we get bored —"

"If we get bored, I'll steal your coffee and we'll throw down in the kitchen," Connor says, cutting Alex's objection off. "And then we'll have make-up sex in the wreckage."

Alex's lips twitch at the mental image. Perhaps retirement isn't such a bad idea.

End


End file.
